


Inlustratur

by am_fae



Series: couldn't wash the echoes out [2]
Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword - Henryk Sienkiewicz, Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: (this is that 'eventually' I was talking about), Angst, Canon Timeline, Captivity, Enemies to Lovers, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-OT3, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8598106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_fae/pseuds/am_fae
Summary: Bohun and Skrzetuski meet again a year after Beresteczko. Some things change and some stay the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is continuous with Counterpoint - well, Counterpoint and a headcanon about the events of the epilogue...
> 
> Lanckoroński is one of the military commanders mentioned in Ogniem i Mieczem, & was at Beresteczko - and became the wojewoda of Ruthenia after Jeremi's death. (Also, ah, note that historical inaccuracy tag...?)
> 
> Inlustratur is Latin for 'illuminated'.

Skrzetuski burst through the doorway with his cavalry boots pounding on the flagstones and stopped when he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the commanders, trying to catch his breath.

_So it was true._

“I came as soon as I heard,” he said. His heart was still hammering in his chest.

“Skrzetuski.” Lanckoroński nodded without looking at him. “Good.”

His voice was only barely audible, grating over the noise of the crowd – regulars and militia, camp followers, even, and in the castle square too. It was high noon; heat beat down in waves from the midday sun, struck the rough-cut stones, and rolled upwards off them.

Bohun’s mouth was red with blood.

He stood there, the epicenter of the tumult. Richly colored clothing stained with blood and dirt; dark hair tangled, falling over his forehead. Through the shimmering heat, he seemed like a mirage – like something unreal: a picture come to life, illuminated with gold leaf and lapis and carmine.

He’d been staring hawklike at the commanders, proud and silent and dangerous; the fact that his hands were bound behind his back barely made him seem less of a threat. Yet the instant Skrzetuski appeared, those eyes had fixed on him, and Skrzetuski could not – _would_ not – look away.

There was something desperately honest in the way they looked at each other then. It reminded Jan of Perejasław, of how for some thousand seconds they had been honest with each other – it reminded him of Bohun’s sabre at his throat and his palm on Bohun’s shoulder, the way they’d stumbled together before Skrzetuski (become so accustomed) had forced his grief back before it could crest and crash over him; it reminded him…

(The Cossack’s blood-smeared mouth was very red.)

Bohun, Jan thought, looked prepared to die.

The din of the crowd swelled again in his ears and he felt suddenly sick.

_Do not think, atamans, that I fear death, or that I defend my life, or that I am exhibiting my innocence._ _Being a noble, I can be tried only by equals…_ They’d been brave words. You have to be afraid to be brave. Standing in the midst of that mass of people, closed in by shoulders and hands and the thick wooden walls of the meeting room, dizzy from blood loss and the stench of sweat and alcohol, Skrzetuski had been _terrified_.

He’d lifted his head (still higher) and launched himself furiously into carelessness and a gleaming pride.

Jan stared at Bohun with an understanding too honest to be tender, and wondered if he still wanted to die. Bohun, magnificent and tempestuous, looked at him as if he were a lifeline. Called on him to bear witness.

Skrzetuski swallowed. Eyes swept down and cut across to Lanckoroński.

The commander was close to smiling.

He gestured minutely with his left hand; tilted his chin towards Skrzetuski. “Let’s go inside.”

 

“The second time, isn’t it, that your own men turned against you.”

Lanckoroński’s voice was full of satisfaction – filled to the brim and overflowing. Bohun glowered in silence. He refused to lower his gaze; would look down and smile something dark and wry and burning, but after he’d mentioned Beresteczko – never.

He could still hear the screams. Never part of the mob during ’48 – above or too late or plowing through at a gallop, but he imagined Czehryń and Korsuń – the massacres, that is, not the battles – must have been for the szlachta what Beresteczko was for them. No less, maybe worse.

_– Hopefully worse._

The bullet had embedded itself scarcely two inches from his heart.

“Can you speak, Cossack?” Lanckoroński addressed him as _ty._ Standing at his side near the dais, Bohun saw Skrzetuski start forward as if to answer before he stopped himself, hands returning by degrees to his sides.

“Yes,” Bohun spat.

“Make peace with your God,” the commander said. “You’ll die within a fortnight.”

A smile or a frown tugged at the corner of Bohun’s mouth.

It could not matter much, either way. He’d rather have gone out resplendent, backlit by a blaze of glory (and still would, if the least chance opened itself), but it did not matter. He would not let them have the satisfaction of thinking him afraid.

Skrzetuski once more inhaled as if he meant to speak; as if he, instead of Bohun, had been dealt the blow. Once more, he stopped himself.

 

“An effective scare tactic, maybe,” Skrzetuski said, “but you must abandon your plans to kill that man.”

“Why,” said Lanckoroński. The word plummeted into the space of the nigh-empty room. Warm shadows were beginning, emboldened by the teetering sun, to creep in at the windows.

“Do not tell me,” the young man responded immediately, “ _with all due respect_ , that you are going to execute an ataman famous through all Ukraine, a man so important he’s acted more than once as Chmielnicki’s second in command, without even attempting negotiations. You do yourself a disservice – you do our whole cause a disservice – if you do not at least consider this.”

“Chmielnicki’d do the same for ours.”

“Evidence would suggest otherwise.”

“Have you forgotten Batoh?”

“It’s exactly Batoh of which I’m speaking! How many of those men could have been saved if we’d had Bohun in our grasp and a finger on the trigger? Kill him, and that leverage vanishes.”

Lanckoroński scoffed and looked away.

“Always like this,” he said.

Jan looked at him like he was daring him to continue. Dark eyes flashed like the glint of steel revealed beneath the hilt of a sabre resting loose in its scabbard: a challenge he was ready to lose, maybe, but a challenge all the same. Anzelm glanced back and forth between them, unquiet.

“Like this,” Lanckoroński repeated, “always jumping to intercede. You can’t have been like this in the wojewoda’s service. Wiśniowiecki would never have tolerated it.”

Those flashing eyes went stony; his blank gaze a tangible thing. Like an accusation, gauntlet at someone’s feet – a stone dropped into a well. He could have been a statue. Anzelm thought that if he breathed, they’d see marble crack.

The silence stretched on until Anzelm could no longer bear it. “What his excellency means to say is that,” he ironed his mouth into a gracious half-smile, “although we value your contribution to the war effort, there’s some uncertainty about your judgement in this one matter, _ignosce mihi_ –”

Stone fractured and fell away. Skrzetuski looked down.

“Thank you for the clarification,” he said, voice dark and quiet: then raised his eyes and addressed them both with a touch of something burning. “I’d rather fight in Ukraine, you know that, but if you don’t like my methods I can damn well get myself reassigned.”

Anzelm sucked in a breath. It was common knowledge that Skrzetuski’d refused reward for Zbaraż – had he accepted, he might be home even now in some mansion in Wielkopolska, raising his baby and kissing his wife. (Sometimes, he wondered if Jan had known at the time what he was giving up.) Refused reward – but minor things, something like being transferred, even to Radziwiłł, no one would or could refuse _him_.

Equally obvious was the fact that the campaign needed him.

“In Wiśniowiecki’s day it was a different time,” Jan began. The acid had gone from his voice. “We – He did what he had to. Now…”

Lanckoroński cut in. “Now, what? Is it not the same rebellion we intend to stamp out? Has the punishment for rebellion changed since Jeremi was the one to wield the sword?”

“Now it’s no longer a rebellion,” Skrzetuski said. “It’s a war, and one, may I add, that we’ve been losing ever since Beresteczko.”

“I’ll humor you.” Lanckoroński’s smile was drenched in bitter gall. He spread his arms. “A war, then! Why should I care? The wording is a technicality. If we are at war, am I not permitted to attack my enemies in whatever way I can?”

Anzelm glanced at him, unnerved. That knight-like figure of a commander was unused to saying things that undercut a code of honor – rather the opposite, too individualistic to lead.

Lanckoroński met his eyes. “But these men are criminals,” he finished, sharp and quiet and severe. He turned his head away.

“Yes,” Jan said abruptly. “He’s a criminal. I should know that better than anyone. _Raptus puellae,_ remember? If things were right in the world, he’d be hanged. But they aren’t. He’s an important man. The only way forward is to negotiate.”

Silence for a moment. Anzelm could practically hear Lanckoroński’s jaw clench and unclench.

“Thank you for your concern,” the wojewoda said. “I’ll see you again before dinner.”

Jan bowed and left the room.

Left alone with his chief advisor, Lanckoroński sank into the nearest chair, grey-streaked hair in shadow. He took a long breath.

“That man kidnapped his wife,” he said.

“Yes.”

The commander shook his head. His mouth twisted in scornful disbelief.

“What are you going to do?”

 

Two days passed before Skrzetuski came to see him, so early in the morning that half the sky was fading black. The creak of the door woke him immediately; he fumbled beneath the cot for a nonexistent weapon before the blurry half-light revealed Skrzetuski and he simply got to his feet instead. The chain behind him weighed down his left wrist.

Jan didn’t say anything. His dark eyes scanned Bohun’s face like he was searching for something and then twisted wryly at the edges in what looked like relief.

He was in armor, smudged but burnished – in armor and in red. Despite the hour, weariness hung over his features, tilted shoulders to narrow waist: back from a scout, maybe, and a little out of breath. The roots of his hair were damp with sweat. For some reason, that detail infuriated him.

Skrzetuski was still silent, and Bohun, furious, grinned something sweet as honey. “Familiar, or don’t you think so, panie? It was a morning just like this one that Jarema’s man came to say you wanted to see me.” Jan’s glance then was almost a warning. He leaned forward. “ ’S a shame you didn’t stay longer, eh? We had so much to discuss.”

“ _Verum dicis_ ,” Skrzetuski said smiling, but the challenge Bohun had expected in his eyes was missing. “And how do you find your lodgings this time?”

“Considerably improved,” Bohun said. “As you see.”

Again that look of relief swept over Skrzetuski’s dark face.

Good then, thought Bohun, he knows what his own side is like. (Skrzetuski’s face had been unreadable when, fresh burns searing, Bohun managed to stand before the couple, expecting a death sentence. He’d looked at Helena, deep and tender, standing so close they touched, before stepping forward; he reached for Bohun’s wrists and turned them in his hands.)

The memory was something uneasy. It angered him.

“I don’t understand you,” he said in an altogether different tone, and Jan’s eyebrows rose as if the threat amused him – delighted, even. “I don’t understand _why you do this_.”

“I’m sure I don’t –”

“There’s no reason to,” Bohun spat. “I’ve hurt you and I’ve hurt –” The name couldn’t escape him. “ _Her,_ and I’d do it again if I could, and you _know that_ , so how is trying to look like some kind of hero worth it? Or, no, it’s not about that, is it, it’s making you somehow feel better about yourself, you’re weak enough to care about that sort of thing. As if saving one Cossack could somehow wash away the blood on your hands!” His breathing came heavily; he no longer knew what he was saying or why. “ _It doesn’t_.”

The warning was back in Skrzetuski’s expression. Bohun stared hungrily at the ghosts in his eyes.

Go on, he dared Jan, get angry, it’s a lot more fun. A lot simpler, goddamn you, and it makes sense.

Warmth returned to Skrzetuski like the sun emerging from an edge of thatched cloud. His gaze slipped down and returned to meet Bohun’s eyes with a quiet, wry grin. The tenderness in that smile took Bohun’s breath away.

“Is it so hard to imagine that I could care for you of my own account?”

His throat felt dry. “Knowing you? _Yes._ ”

“Then maybe you don’t know me,” Skrzetuski said. The amusement had vanished from his tone – the warmth remained, heavy like a soaked cloth is heavy: the set of his shoulders was weighed down by it.

It was Bohun who retreated before this image.

Maybe, he was brave enough to consider, Skrzetuski was right.

 

His memory of Beresteczko should have been corpses, the flash and crunch of steel and the sound of horses screaming, the bullets that brought him down, panic infusing the air like the smoke, ribs breaking inwards, red in the sky and the water. But his nightmares always ended in the same way.

The amber color of Skrzetuski’s eyes, flooding the haze of his vison – the tips of his fingers skimming over Bohun’s torn clothing, resting at his pulse. And, head bowed, once more taking up his wrist, turning Bohun’s hand in his own, and – every time – pressing chapped lips to the hollow of his palm, like a secret or a promise.

He woke up in a safe place within the week, fading in and out of consciousness, and couldn’t be sure if seeing Skrzetuski at all had been reality or another fever dream.

 

Jan paused in the stairwell to regain his bearings. The sun was already hanging low in the sky by now, just above that border of darkness. Beams of light, bright and irrepressible, rose reluctantly through the castle’s arrow loops; when he looked out at the surrounding steppe, they sparked in his eyes and made him blink. The wall’s stone surface, yet untouched by the morning, was cold beneath his hands.

Skrzetuski ran a hand through his hair and raised his eyes again to that bright horizon. Despite the clear, thin air, he felt as if he were underwater.

_Is it so hard to imagine that I could –_

Two years ago, Skrzetuski had sacrificed Helena to Jeremi Wiśniowiecki and the need of the Commonwealth; at the same time, he’d laid his mind, his soul, and all the strength in his body on the same altar.

( _My sweet girl, may God forsake me if I ever abandon you!)_

He had come too far to go back.

Setting Bohun free was no longer an option and it had never been one. Helping – in any way helping – was treason, and a treason far more certain than that which it had been to try to keep some piece of himself for himself, like withholding food from a requisition. No, this was beyond even considering, and that meant it was up to Lanckoroński and Lanckoroński alone if Bohun died now or in some months’ time or never, and if his death took a week over the coals or a day on the stake or two minutes in front of a firing squad. After all, Skrzetuski was well-versed in such matters.

The thought was hard to bear. He forced panic back down in his throat and reminded himself of the country and the country’s laws – of Jeremi – of _fiat voluntuas tua_ ; he breathed deeply and held the thought that Helena was safe and happy and loved him close against his chest, warm and liquid as candlelight: the thought that she’d share his grief, too.

Maybe it wouldn’t be _grief,_ he thought, more of a hollow; a ringing sense of loss.

 

Anzelm was laying the wojewoda’s maps across his table, weighed down by heavy candlesticks at their furling borders, when he noticed Skrzetuski’s silhouette in the darkened doorway.

“Is anything amiss?”

The dry half-question barely registered. Jan drew near the table’s edge and, glancing at Anzelm, tilted his head towards the campaign maps.

“What has he decided?"

Anzelm feigned ignorance.

“With Bohun,” Skrzetuski clarified.

Another momentary silence, soft and heavy as lead, before their eyes met.

“You care about him,” Anzelm said. It wasn’t a question.

Jan’s eyes, too, were leaden. “He’s an honorable man.”

 

The thud of heavy boots on stone set Bohun on edge. When Skrzetuski – and he hadn’t been certain who to expect, oh no – burst into the cell, the leather soles of his cavalry boots skidding against the floor, the Cossack’s eyes were closed, chin tilted back in affected insolence. He took his time responding.

The faded, slanting gleam of late summer evening made the edges of Jan’s hair glow.

“They aren’t going to kill you,” Skrzetuski said. He sounded out of breath. “Lanckoroński’s keeping you alive as leverage until an exchange is negotiated.”

“Or until they kill me.”

Jan paused. He glanced at Bohun’s dark and careless smile and took a deep breath. For one mesmerizing moment his teeth caught his bottom lip.

“Helena still thinks about you, you know.”

Bohun felt as if he’d been stabbed.

_I believe you. I believe you! I’m sure she’s dreamed me plenty of times and never the way she’s dreamed_ you, _either_. _I’m sure she stays awake at night when the fear won’t abandon her and curses my name._

He tore his gaze from Jan’s mouth and forced a bitter, furious laugh. Something inside him felt uncertain at its center, weak, as if he were teetering at the edge of some unseen precipice. His lips quirked upwards. It hurt. “And it’s for her you’re trying to save me?”

“No,” Jan said, eyes unreadable. “It’s for me.”

And suddenly Jan’s mouth was on his, lips soft and full against his own, his callused palms sliding hard over Bohun’s shoulders to his neck, and Bohun barely had time to think before his eyelids fluttered shut, head tilting back of its own accord, and he reached out blindly towards Skrzetuski, weighted hands catching and holding on the curve of his waist.

Jan pulled him closer, close enough that Bohun could feel the quick pounding of his heart, the rise and fall of his breathing through kontusz and żupan, and as Jan’s hands slid into Bohun’s hair and those chapped lips _parted_ it occurred to Bohun that they were much too far apart, an intolerable abyss apart, really, and he hooked the sash of Jan’s kontusz in a fist and yanked him closer still until they were flush against each other and he could feel as well as hear Jan’s breath catch in his throat when his other hand pressed roughly into the soft hollow of skin over his hipbone, scraping harsh circles with his thumbnail until Jan gasped into his mouth and kissed him harder. And oh God, the thought had never even crossed his mind to do things like this to anyone, or to ever want – and he _wanted_ , so much he was dizzy with it and with the taste of Skrzetuski’s mouth on his. He kissed back clumsy and forceful and his hands slid up Jan’s sides, relinquishing that iron grip on his waist for more closeness, caught up in the dizzying warmth of it, and when Jan shifted against his hips an involuntary groan escaped him and he pressed the advantage of Jan’s lips parting in delight by kissing him again. Somewhere in their combined dizziness Jan’s hands dropped to his throat and began fumbling with the laces on his shirt, and Bohun’s fingers slid already along the smooth skin of Jan’s waist and back insomuch as they could beneath torn and crumpled fabric, pulse racing, relishing the way Jan arched towards him from under his nails, and he _wanted_.

It was Jan who broke away, chest heaving; Bohun wound his hands like claws into his clothing and stared hungrily at his dark eyes and their shaded lashes, his swollen lips, the smooth line of his neck. Half the room was in shadow now, broken in places by the glint of silver-threaded brocade and the pale, crumpled linen of Jan’s ruined collar.

Skrzetuski’s voice was breathless and quiet. “I’m not going to let you die.”

He left in a rush, worn boots rasping against dirt and stone. By the time Bohun, reaching out with that cuffed hand for the wall behind him, steadied himself, he’d disappeared.

Bohun tried to shake the thought of Jan from his mind. It was in raising his head from his hands, eyes still unfocused, that he noticed the crack in the wall.

It began about halfway up, near the edge, a hairline fracture just barely visible in spite of the growing slate-grey darkness – or perhaps it was the odd, tilted angle of the light itself which allowed it to be seen.

He rose to his feet at once, as lightly as if the chain binding his left wrist were already removed, and traced it up as far as his hand could reach before rocking back onto his heels and following it further with his eyes as it widened, up to the very corner of the grate over the window, where the edge next to that hollow was eaten away at the sides by rust and wear  and – and this was what captured his attention so keenly, because high above him in that single corner, loose, perhaps, in its iron casing, was a narrow, twisted bolt.                     

 

Skrzetuski returned to his own room some hours later, heartbeat still erratic.

He hadn't wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

Jan sank onto the edge of the bed and let his elbows fall to his knees. His eyes closed nigh of their own accord, fluttering shut from exhaustion and yearning; but of course the moment they did _he_ stood behind them, more beautiful than ever in the half-light, the myth become human again like the story of those maidens whose swan forms melt away at sunset. It could be read in the outline of his profile, the rise and fall of his breathing, the way the shadows blurred his dark hair. Jan could imagine it in daylight; kissing the storybook hero from his face. Could – _had_ , even before Perejasław, and how Bohun kissed, clumsy and wholehearted and furious, as if a kiss was a battleground or a fistfight, had only confirmed him in this. He couldn't stop thinking about it, about Bohun's inexperienced musician's fingers devouring everything they touched, about what could have happened if he hadn't stepped away.

His eyes snapped open; he stood in one motion and went to open a trunk of clothing, pulling off boots and kontusz and żupan.

_It's late,_ Jan told himself, _and there's too much to do to afford distractions_.

He went towards the table where the candle he'd brought in rested next to a basin of water, casting a loose circle of light; it was as he stepped into this circle that he was stopped, frozen, by the cold, threadlike edge of a blade against his throat.

The Ruthenian voice accompanying it was low and dark in his ear. "For old times' sake, lieutenant?"

"It's colonel now," Skrzetuski said wryly, and Bohun stepped into the light.

He lifted the stolen sabre from Jan's throat, tactfully ignoring Jan trying to catch his breath afterwards, and perused what could be seen of the room's contents, toying with the blade and occasionally pocketing things. Jan registered faintly that he'd gotten his rings back from Lanckoroński’s man.

"It's been an enjoyable visit," Bohun remarked in the tone that said danger was soon to follow. "A shame duty calls so soon." He spun back towards him. "Maybe one day you'll stay with us again, hey?"

Skrzetuski's smile was more of a grimace. "Try it."

Bohun neared him and stopped scarcely a foot away. His voice had turned serious, rough. "I came to say goodbye."

"Godspeed," Jan said.

Both remained. Jan stood before him as if transfixed, feet unable to step aside, eyes unable to close, dry throat unable to swallow. He felt like he must be trembling from the effort of it.

After what seemed like an eternity, Bohun swayed on his feet and reached towards him.                                                                                                                                         


End file.
